What Would Skeptics Do?
torsdag 10 mars 2011
Catholic priests raping nuns...
torsdag 7 oktober 2010
Phil Plait - Don't be a Dick
Phil Plait - Don't Be A Dick from JREF on Vimeo.
tisdag 14 september 2010
Microwave Ovens
Having grown up in Järna, which may be the most pseudoscience-dense place in Sweden I have learned that microwave ovens are dangerous and that it kills your food (yes that is the term you normally hear).
Their arguments, of course, rely heavily on the naturalistic fallacy i.e. they claim that heating using microwaves is somehow "unnatural", that is unlike conventional oven which they seem to consider "natural". It is as if electromagnetic radiation in the infrared spectrum is somehow more natural than electromagnetic radiation with microwave frequencies.
There are however also some more empirical claims used by people who are against microwaves. For example many people quote a "study" where they compared growth of plants which had received either microwaved water or water which had not been heated. It is claimed that the plants which got the microwaved water waned down and died. The plants which had just gotten normal water on the other hand flourished. According to microwave critics this shows that microwaving water takes out some sort of "life energy" out of the H2O molecules and therefore the plants die.
Another empirical claim that microwave antagonists sometimes use is that microwaves are forbidden in Russia because they are so dangerous – this is just a simple lie.
One claim with some actual research behind it is that microwave ovens destroy certain vitamins in your food (see here for example). This claim is probably true but only if you compare microwaved food with raw food. The study quoted on health bulletin shows that meat heated in microwave ovens has 30-40% less vitamin B12 than raw meat. So if you start eating your steaks raw you can skip a glass of milk a day (which would otherwise compensate the loss).
In the same study you can find the following paragraph:
"Microwave ovens are widely used for cooking and food processing. Extensive studies (Cross and Fung, 1982; Hoffman and Zabik, 1985) have shown equal or better retention of some vitamins (B1, B2, B6, C, and folic acid) after microwave heating compared with conventional heating."
In other words, if you lack vitamins, cooking in your microwave can help you.
It is also interesting that otherwise environmentally conscious people are so against microwave ovens even though they save a lot of energy compared to conventional ovens.
So where does all this leave us? My conclusion is that microwave heating is a fast and convenient way of cooking. Don't put eggs or metal in there and don't overheat things so that you burn yourself. If you follow these guidelines a microwave oven will be a terrific assistant in your kitchen. Of course some things just taste better when you cook them in a conventional oven and in that case I am all for that…
If you want more on this topic I can recommend this episode on Brian Dunning's skeptoid.
lördag 24 juli 2010
My favorite podcasts - Best podcasts
lördag 6 mars 2010
The placebo response as a form of classical conditioning
tisdag 19 januari 2010
Lund University Blog Portal
onsdag 13 januari 2010
Our tiny planet in our huge Universe
Our earth is a pretty big place, yet planets such as Saturn and Uranus are much bigger. Jupiter, however, is larger than all the other planets in our solar system combined into one planet - now that is big. Compare Jupiter to our sun and Jupiter looks like a pea next to
football, put another way - the sun is huge and massive! Still, our sun, which we rely on so intimately, is one of a hundred billion stars in our massive galaxy "the milky way". The Milky Way is a hundred thousand light years across - meaning that it takes light 100.000
years to reach us from the other end of the galaxy (yet the light can whizz around the earth 7 times in one second). Our sun, which is huge, is not even close to one light year across - rather it is about one light minute...
Our huge Milky Way galaxy containing a hundred billion stars and with a diameter of about 100.000 light years is small compared to the local cluster of galaxies (a small cluster of half a dusin galaxies), which measured millions of light years across.
Still, theory suggests that our 28 billion light year observable universe is just a small fraction of the true size of the universe (we cannot see the whole universe because galaxies far away may be travelling away from us faster than the speed of light in which case their light will never reach us). Maybe the observable universe is just "one billionth" of the size of our true universe.
At last - many theorists believe that our universe, in which we are much smaller than a grain of sand in the Sahara dessert, is but one out of a large number of universes...
I don't know about you, but these numbers make my heart beat faster. I feel small and improbable, but also grand, lucky and inspired - it turns all my daily woes into experiences - I feel lucky for having experienced what it feels like to be sad, angry or happy - I feel
lucky for being able to study all the grand aspects of nature - from our huge universe to our fantastic brains.